Do you know what happens to you when you watch television? Apart from being aware that we are receiving something - enjoyment, a message, or maybe a feeling of boredom - most of us don't. And most of us means about 98 per cent of the population in the developed world. Television, after barely forty years in our midst, has become an activity pursued almost as universally as eating and sleeping, and yet hardly any one of us stops to think about what is going on in those countless hours spent inert, staring at a bright, flickering light. A few, Guy Lyon Playfair among them, has noticed certain effects of this seemingly innocuous pastime and have begun to ask questions. The answers - given here by scientists, doctors, psychologists, teachers, ordinary viewers, and of course the author himself - are entertaining, thought provoking, at times quite shocking, and will come as a revelation to many. Could we be enjoying the most powerful narcotic the world has ever known, without realising or regulating its effect? Or are we already unsuspecting citizens of benign brave new world? If either is true, do we care? Playfair believes we should, and this book takes a lively and searching look at the whole television phenomenon. It is not the people who produce the material on our screens that he investigates so much as the technology itself, and the subtle changes to the individual and society brought about by the box in our homes.